


Lonely for Something

by soundlessAsdots



Series: Around the Study Table [2]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:00:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundlessAsdots/pseuds/soundlessAsdots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Annie didn’t understand. Was she really that annoying? That transparent to him? Jeff’s hands were glued to that phone and usually his eyes only left it when he became angry or when he locked eyes with Britta after Pierce or Troy made a stupid comment.</p><p>A companion to, "Who Will Abed be Today," from Annie's POV.</p><p>Takes place somewhere in Season 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lonely for Something

**Author's Note:**

> Second of four in the series.

Why wouldn’t he look at her? 

Sometimes Annie didn’t understand. Was she really that annoying? That transparent to him? Jeff’s hands were glued to that phone and usually his eyes only left it when he became angry or when he locked eyes with Britta after Pierce or Troy made a stupid comment. However...however, even now that both Troy and Pierce were essentially gone from the group, he still looked at Britta every now and then; smirking. It was like they had some unspoken, telekinetic, weird, invented language they only could understand.  

They could talk to each other with their eyes.  

Annie never wanted to admit the envy she felt about this.

She watched him text still. He made a sarcastic comment, which made Annie giggle. It was something about the class he was taking. Britta didn’t laugh. Instead her eyes met his and they said something to him. Annie could never read their behavior and she always worried something was going on between them--even though it was most likely nothing. 

Jeff didn’t talk to Annie with his eyes. He warned her with them; to stay away, to stop being childish. 

She wasn’t being childish and it wasn’t her fault she had feelings and actually cared about the men she wanted to sleep with. This wasn’t a game to her, like it was to some people. Her eyes shifted to Britta for a quick moment. 

Annie used to be fine about her feelings for him, content even. Sometimes she thought about how he might have ruined her the night he kissed her after the Transfer Dance. 

Because now, right now, at this very moment, she shouldn’t be worrying about this. It had been almost three years.  

Because this, Jeff and her, was never going to happen. 

Sometimes she thought she imagined it; the kiss. He made her feel like she imagined it. 

They all did. 

Whether it be talks about discretion, crying in closets (what an appropriate metaphor for her high school boyfriend), or their personality literally disappearing after what may have been the greatest kiss of her life, despite being covered head to toe with orange paint, they made her feel like it was imagined; like she was used. Used for either revenge, for a beard, or for an homage. 

Vaughn didn’t use her...did he? He was upset about Britta, she thought. Was Annie the rebound? Would he have asked Britta to go to Delaware with him? 

She was in doubt again, so she assured herself with a quote from one of her favorite books, _Charlie St. Cloud_ , “That's death and life, you see. We all shine on. You just have to release your hearts, alert your senses, and pay attention. A leaf, a star, a song, a laugh. Notice all the little things, because somebody is reaching out to you. Somebody loves you.”

Somebody out there would love her, she persuaded herself.  Maybe even Jeff. Maybe if she waited for him...Maybe he would eventually give her a signal...Maybe he would reach out to her with his eyes? 

Her memories shifted to her recent dates; the only three she had in the last two years. There was Dan from her chemistry class, who took her to the movies. He wore lacrosse shorts, paid for himself with a gift card and then told Annie she would have to pay for herself because his gift card had run out. Then there was also the dinner date with Mark, who hung out at the coffee shop down the street from her apartment. At the end of the date, he looked in his wallet and said he had no cash. Annie was about to say she would pay, but then he added, casually, “I can’t use my credit card, my wife will find out.” Without saying a word, Annie set some cash down on the table and walked out of the restaurant. The third guy, Tim, took her to one of Vicki and Neil’s parties. He left her sitting on the couch and went to the bathroom. An hour later, Annie found him in there with a guy from the basketball team. She spent the rest of the night in the bathroom convincing him to come out to his parents. 

Annie then noticed Abed was looking at her (He was doing this a lot lately). She assumed he was trying to figure out what she was going to do; anticipating her next move.

She decided to concentrate on her notes. Her purple pen glided across the paper in her perfect, loopy handwriting. She looked up and over at Jeff as she twirled the pen through her fingers. This calmed her. She smiled at him, shyly and closed-lipped. Her hand began to reach out for him, to tap him on the arm, but she stopped herself. She nervously curled her fingers into her palm and put her arm under the table. Her eyes looked at her literature notes. It was gibberish. 

She needed to get over this; this school girl crush. 

It was not worth it. Jeff wasn’t worth it, she decided. Right? 

He was still texting. His eyes never left the screen of his stupid Blackberry. She flipped the page and looked at her literature notes. The purple-inked notes said, “How mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhaps our greatest happinesses spring from such longings--being in love with one who is oblivious of you.”  Damn you, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie thought, because it did not grant her happiness. It was fucking torture and her stupid, childish daydreams didn’t make it any better; it made it worse knowing they would never come true. 

 She shoved the notebook into her backpack and took out her criminology notes. The zipper nearly broke from her frustrated hands forcing the bag to close. She could hear the clacking and clicking of Jeff’s Blackberry buttons. Apparently he still couldn’t afford an upgrade. 

It was because he was still here, at Greendale, and not working as a lawyer. That’s what he gets for faking a credit for a class about the films of Nicholas Cage. He had lost his Art Credit for the second time; first pottery, now a fake film class. 

Now Dean Pelton was making him actually take the class as punishment. Twice a week he came into Greendale and watched a Nicholas Cage movie, then wrote a paper on it and handed it into the Dean. Jeff called the class, “The Art of Being Nick.” His inspiration for the title of the class was apparently from a _Family Ties_ spin-off from the eighties. Only Britta, Abed and himself recalled it (Britta only vaguely remembered the lady from Seinfeld was in it). The Nick character, whoever he was (Annie had never seen an episode of _Family Ties_ ), reminded Britta of an ex-boyfriend. 

 “Of course he does,” Jeff looked up from his Blackberry and smirked at Britta. 

Jeff and Britta quoted _Family Ties_. Then Abed joined them. Shirley was at the sandwich shop and Annie felt left out. She leaned back in her chair and hid her discontent with a criminology book. She tried to read the pages, the paragraphs, but the letters seemed to not form sentences; they looked like random swirls. Her mind was not with Alexandre Lacassagne. 

Then Jeff said something sarcastic. Britta apparently misquoted something.  

And Annie became even more distracted. 

Then Britta said something sarcastic back to him. 

Annie rolled her eyes at their quips. She tried to focus on her book and concentrate harder. Her eyes scanned the page and she found one sentence that stood out to her, “One must know how to doubt.” 

Thanks, Lacassagne, Annie thought to herself with sarcasm. Yeah, it would be easy for him to doubt this ridiculous bickering between Jeff and Britta didn’t mean anything, but Lacassagne was dead. She was also sure Lacassagne meant one must doubt the circumstances of a crime scene and imagine every possibility...just like what Abed did when he always tried to predict what the members of the Group would do next. 

Abed said something about the tension between Jeff and Britta now that Troy was gone.  Then he looked at Annie again. His head was tilted, like he was contemplating something. Annie could never read what Abed was thinking. He was like an riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside of an enigma; completely and absolutely unreadable unless you understood the key to the puzzle...Annie also thought about how she shouldn't relate her life to Winston Churchill quotes she remembered for Model UN Conferences. 

Britta tilted her head at Abed and said something about how Abed psychologically wanted her and Jeff together because they were his Greendale parents and this was Abed’s attempt to fix his own parents’ divorce. Like Britta could actually read Abed's emotions, Annie scoffed to herself.  

Then Annie got up from her seat and told Abed they were leaving. 

She drove them home in silence. Then they walked up the stairwell and into the apartment, also in silence. She set her bag down on the floor and walked into the living room. She stood between the door to her bedroom and the kitchen table. Her feet pivoted towards Abed and she looked at him; her eyes were daring him to do something. 

Abed rose his eyebrows at her and looked over at the door to the Dreamatorium. 

Annie asked him if he missed it. 

He nodded back so she walked up to the door. He stood next to her and she looked up at him; wondering why he like to do this. Her eyes met with his. They were so brown, warm, and comforting. For some reason, she felt a connecton when usually Abed's gaze felt like a blank stare analyzing her like she was a science experiment. But now, he wasn't looking at her like that; she couldn't explain how, just that it was different. To her this felt comforting in contrast to Jeff's icy-blue eyes she often tried to look into;to have a moment with, like the one she was experiencing now with Abed. Then she wanted that kiss again. She wanted to feel the sticky orange paint pour on them, his soft lips on hers, and the taste of his mouth. She wanted him to be somebody she could love. 

She thought, why couldn’t she love him? Her mind flashed back to her literature class earlier that day and her photographic memory showed her David Foster Wallace’s words, “We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?” To Annie, it felt like something was missing or someone was, but she couldn’t figure it out. If Abed was initially right, that she loved the idea of love, then what did this, her wanting to love Abed or whoever Abed was going to be in the Dreamatorium, mean? Had she gotten over it yet? Probably not, she thought. She probably wasn’t over it. Was he testing her again or did he truly miss the Dreamatorium? Out of forced optimism, Annie guessed the former. 

“Who will you be this time?” she asked with a whisper.  

Abed didn't answered her. Instead he walked into the green, tiled room and motioned for her to come with him. She walked in and stood in front of him. The door slammed closed behind her.  

“Who do you want me to be this time?” he asked. 

Annie didn’t have that answer. “Maybe we shouldn't do this?”  She thought and knew this wouldn’t be a good idea. The other times weren't good ideas either; whether he was being Don Draper, Han Solo, the Inspector, or even...Jeff...especially Jeff. 

“Who do you want me to be?” he asked again, this time more pressing. 

She hesitated and bit her bottom lip. Joyce Carol Oates came back to her, “She wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.” Annie looked up at the ceiling and then back into Abed’s eyes. She desperately wanted to ask him to be someone she could fall in love with, but she couldn’t say that to him.

His hand grasped hers. “I don’t know,” she said as she looked at her hand in his. 


End file.
